The Paradise Mystery eBook

CHAPTER X

DIPLOMACY

Bryce went back to Wrychester firmly convinced that
Mark Ransford had killed John Braden. He reckoned
things up in his own fashion. Some years must
have elapsed since Braden, or rather Brake’s
release. He had probably heard, on his release,
that Ransford and his, Brake’s, wife had gone
abroad —­in that case he would certainly
follow them. He might have lost all trace of
them; he might have lost his original interest in
his first schemes of revenge; he might have begun
a new life for himself in Australia, whence he had
undoubtedly come to England recently. But he
had come, at last, and he had evidently tracked Ransford
to Wrychester—­why, otherwise, had he presented
himself at Ransford’s door on that eventful
morning which was to witness his death? Nothing,
in Bryce’s opinion, could be clearer.
Brake had turned up. He and Ransford had met—­most
likely in the precincts of the Cathedral. Ransford,
who knew all the quiet corners of the old place, had
in all probability induced Brake to walk up into the
gallery with him, had noticed the open doorway, had
thrown Brake through it. All the facts pointed
to that conclusion—­it was a theory which,
so far as Bryce could see, was perfect. It ought
to be enough—­proved—­to put Ransford
in a criminal dock. Bryce resolved it in his
own mind over and over again as he sped home to Wrychester—­he
pictured the police listening greedily to all that
he could tell them if he liked. There was only
one factor in the whole sum of the affair which seemed
against him—­the advertisement in the Times.
If Brake desired to find Ransford in order to be
revenged on him, why did he insert that advertisement,
as if he were longing to meet a cherished friend again?
But Bryce gaily surmounted that obstacle—­full
of shifts and subtleties himself, he was ever ready
to credit others with trading in them, and he put
the advertisement down as a clever ruse to attract,
not Ransford, but some person who could give information
about Ransford. Whatever its exact meaning might
have been, its existence made no difference to Bryce’s
firm opinion that it was Mark Ransford who flung John
Brake down St. Wrytha’s Stair and killed him.
He was as sure of that as he was certain that Braden
was Brake. And he was not going to tell the
police of his discoveries—­he was not going
to tell anybody. The one thing that concerned
him was—­how best to make use of his knowledge
with a view to bringing about a marriage between himself
and Mark Ransford’s ward. He had set his
mind on that for twelve months past, and he was not
a man to be baulked of his purpose. By fair
means, or foul—­he himself ignored the last
word and would have substituted the term skilful for
it—­Pemberton Bryce meant to have Mary Bewery.

Mary Bewery herself had no thought of Bryce in her
head when, the morning after that worthy’s return
to Wrychester, she set out, alone, for the Wrychester
Golf Club. It was her habit to go there almost
every day, and Bryce was well acquainted with her
movements and knew precisely where to waylay her.
And empty of Bryce though her mind was, she was not
surprised when, at a lonely place on Wrychester Common,
Bryce turned the corner of a spinny and met her face
to face.